UEFA’s Champions League tournament may offer its sponsors a staggering 348 days a year to activate in, but few properties offer a platform for brands as huge as the final itself.
Milan’s San Siro will hold 72,000 for this year’s final, but the match claims to being the biggest annual sporting event – the 2013 final drew 360m TV viewers globally.
With research from native video advertising creator Teads claims that UK fans alone will spend a staggering 1.7m hours reading about the game in newspapers and online, 67% of fans second screening the game (and 3m watching on BT’s UK YouTube live stream alone) there is also an impressive global social audience too.
Indeed, five of Activative’s favourite sponsor campaigns around the 2016 final made the most of this by using old school, traditional, local ad platforms in Milan to link with more contemporary, social, global initiatives.
For example, the centrepiece of Nissan’s #GetExcitedInMilan work was a 360° YouTube live stream (a sports event world-first) connecting the host city with fans on Madrid’s streets (both finalists’ home).
Taking a simpler route, Heineken’s 100-character ‘Final Hashtag’ used old-school, outdoor posters in Milan to drive a universal social media ticket contest.
Sony Xperia’s ‘Road To Milan’ online film series saw Milan icons Zanetti and Gattuso link the city to the globe and its Gogglebox style #ChampionsSofa feed followed Madrid fans watching the game at home.
In terms of in-person host city experiences, PepsiMax enabled those taking on the challenge of its ‘Volley 360° Arena’ to share it socially with their followers across the planet.
While MasterCard’s ‘Madness or Priceless’ work focused on connecting fans and stars to the extent that brand endorser and Italy/Milan legend Gianni Buffon even got a tattoo off the face of one his his fans.
